Janissary

A Janissary was a slave soldier recruited as a young boy in the Ottoman Empire. They served as the backbone of the Ottoman Army and were also the elite guards of the Sultan himself.

History
The Janissaries were the elite personal guard of the sultan as well as the backbone of the Ottoman Army, serving as the almost exclusively-recruited infantry unit of the Ottoman army. The Janissary Corps consisted of slaves, mainly prisoners or Christian converts, who were trained at a young age and brought up with nothing to lose but their lives. Fiercely (sometimes suicidally) loyal to the Sultan, the Janissaries were a political force in their own right, as they were the fists of the government as well as powerful decision-makers. Many times, they opposed reforms, overthrowing Sultan Selim III in 1809, but they were abolished in 1826 to allow further advances in technology.